Facilitating the sharing of health information

Abstract

A system for facilitating the sharing of health information is provided herein. The system may be implemented at a server-side, intermediary location, or client-side (or combination of some or all). The system employs records of patient access to health to create a database of known locations and sessions in which the patient is assigned to a various network of health information exchanges (HIE).

We claim: 
     
         1 . A system for facilitating a sharing of health information, comprising:
 a data store comprising a computer readable medium storing a program of instructions for the facilitating of the sharing;   a processor that executes the program of instructions;   a request receiver configured to receive a request for the health information associated with a patient;   a patient information receiver configured to receive information about the patient;   a patient correlator configured to correlated the received information with shared information from a community data store,   wherein the patient correlator is configured to match extracted demographic information from the received information, and employ the extracted demographic information to perform the correlation.   
     
     
         2 . The system according to  claim 1 , wherein the received information is of an admit-discharge-transfer (ADT) message. 
     
     
         3 . The system according to  claim 1 , further comprising a patient data outputter configured to output additional information about the patient based on the shared information. 
     
     
         4 . The system according to  claim 3 , wherein the additional information is defined as information pertaining to visits to health information exchanges (HIE) associated with the patient. 
     
     
         5 . The system according to  claim 3 , wherein the additional information is defined as information associated with a credential or authorization to access a health information exchange (HIE) associated with the patient. 
     
     
         6 . A system for facilitating a sharing of health information, comprising:
 a data store comprising a computer readable medium storing a program of instructions for the facilitating of the sharing;   a processor that executes the program of instructions;   a record receiver configured to receive a patient information record about a patient;   a record organizer configured to organize the received patient information record with matching previously received patient information; and   a connection updater configured to transmit the organized received patient information record to a second system for facilitating the sharing of health information.   
     
     
         7 . The system according to  claim 6 , wherein the received patient information is of an admit-discharge-transfer (ADT) message. 
     
     
         8 . The system according to  claim 6 , wherein the system is associated with a first health information exchange (HIE) associate with a first global identifier, and the second system is associated with a second HIE with a second global identifier, the first and second global identifier being associated with the patient. 
     
     
         9 . A system for facilitating a sharing of health information, comprising:
 a data store comprising a computer readable medium storing a program of instructions for the facilitating of the sharing;   a processor that executes the program of instructions;   a patient information configured to receive information about a patient's visit to a health information exchange (HIE) network;   a demographic transmitter configured to extract demographic information about the patient, and transmit the extracted demographic information to an external server via a network connection; and   an information accepter configured to accept additional information via the network connection.   
     
     
         10 . The system according to  claim 9 , wherein the received information about the patient is of an admit-discharge-transfer (ADT) message. 
     
     
         11 . The system according to  claim 10 , wherein the additional information is defined as additional information about the patient from a second HIE. 
     
     
         12 . The system according to  claim 10 , wherein the additional information is defined as a request for additional authentication to access a second HIE. 
     
     
         13 . The system according to  claim 10 , wherein the additional information is defined as credentials to access a second HIE.